1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to communication networks and, more particularly, to a method and apparatus for implementing a secure side conversation on a multi-party communication session.
2. Description of the Related Art
Telephone networks have been in use for many years and have evolved considerably over time. The Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) is a circuit network that allows telephone calls to be placed between two or more parties. Voice traffic may also be carried on a data network such as the Internet using a networking protocol commonly referred to as Voice over IP (VoIP). In addition, cellular and other wireless networks have been developed and deployed to allow users to place and receive telephone calls wirelessly. All of these networks, and other private telephone networks, are interconnected to allow individuals on different types of networks to make and receive telephone calls.
As telephone services are developed, they are deployed on the network so that the new services may be sold to customers. For example, telephone conferencing has been developed which allows two or more parties to be interconnected by a bridge. The bridge enables audio from one user to be sent to the other participants to the conference call. Conference telephone calls are commonly used for business meetings, seminars, and for many other purposes to enable multiple people to talk with each other.
Virtual environments are commonly used in on-line gaming, such as for example in online role playing games where users assume the role of a character and take control over most of that character's actions. In addition to games, virtual environments are also being used to simulate real life environments to provide an interface for users that will enable on-line education, training, shopping, business collaboration, and other types of interactions between groups of users and between businesses and users.
When a user participates in a virtual environment, the user can elect to communicate with other users of the virtual environment or may be automatically allowed to talk with other people via the virtual environment. For example, the participants may communicate with each other by typing messages to each other on a chat session, or a voice communication session may be established to enable the participants to talk with each other. Frequently, the voice communication session may be used by many different participants such that the communication session is used by tens or hundreds of users simultaneously.
During a telephone conference, communication session implemented as part of a virtual environment, or other multi-party communication session, audio data is sent to a server, mixed, and then sent out to all participants. Thus, every user can hear every other user or at least a subset of the other users participating on the multi-party communication session. Additionally, during this process, the audio can be recorded by the owner of the server or by any of the other participants without the knowledge of the other participants.
There are times when people on a multi-party communication session may want to be able to talk privately without being overheard or recorded. For example, two people that have established a presence in the virtual environment may want to talk privately with each other rather than on the public multi-party communication session. Although the users may call each other using separate devices, such as by calling each other on their cellular phones, it would be preferable to enable the users to talk with each other privately on the data network. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a method and apparatus that would enable users to implement a secure side conversation on a multi-party communication session.